Animal Lover
by Midwich Cuckoo
Summary: An old man, whose two pets were the sole joy of his life, dies.


**Beta - Moviemom44**

**Standard disclaimer - I don't own anything out of the Garfield world. The only thing about it I dare to claim is mine is the concept.**

**Animal lover**

Heavy drops of lashing rain beat loudly on the roof of the old house. To say the building was a ruin would be going too far, but it was easy to see that it had been years since the place had been renovated, having lost its initial white color and taking on a disgusting yellowish hue. The windows, not cleaned for many years as well, resembled leucoma, the whitish opaque tint of the eyes of a blind man. A thick layer of burdocks, thistles and other weeds, or whatever they were before the autumn and the pouring rains had turned them into a disgusting mass of brown goo, covered what was once a well taken care of lawn that had spread luxuriantly toward a garden. In the last shy flashes of the sun breaking through the darkness of the upcoming dusk, the thin skeletons of dead plants, their shredded leaves still clinging valiantly to their stems despite the gusts of November wind, could easily have been mistaken by those with sinister imaginations for triffids that came to Earth to take over the town, starting with this overgrown garden.

The people gathered out on the lawn, huddling in front of the house and listening greedily to the commands shouted by the doctors and policemen bustling back and forth, certainly weren't the owners of the most fertile imaginations in the world, but they couldn't resist the temptation of craning their necks to catch the sight of what was happening. Neighbor inquisitiveness is something you can always count on in all nooks of the world, resistant even to rain, which was falling from the sky in quantities now, and to the smell of death rising from the window, open and ajar. The sickly odor found its way beneath the old worn out curtain and drowned out any other smell that could ever have reached the standing neighbors from the window. Even the stench of fustiness one could expect in such a building was no match for it. It was the only smell that permeated the air, the same as the soft murmuring of the neighbors' whispers was – but for the noise made by the rain drops hitting the ground – the only sound that resonated there, in this suburban leaflessness that smelled of rain and inertia in the November dusk.

"So the old man is dead. It was you who informed the police, I reckon," a man in a grey coat stated matter of factly as he held a black umbrella over his and his companion's heads. The accessory shaded them both like the wings of a big predatory bat preparing to jump down on them.

The bald man in his fifties standing near him wiped the raindrops from his glasses with a piece of toilet paper he found in a pocket of his heavy coat and cleared his throat before he answered.

"Yeah, I didn't see him for the last couple of days so I decided to take a look through the window. I thought maybe the poor guy didn't feel well, but I didn't expect this." The man glanced over at the ambulance standing near the collapsing fence surrounding the house with a gloomy look on his fleshy face. One of the doctors was in the car hiding from the rain, while the other one who arrived with her was at the door talking to the policemen who seemed intent on opening the door without having to force it unnecessarily.

His friend nodded "He was a good neighbor. Even if he was… you know." The man's fingers sketched a circle around his head – an international sign expressing someone's not being in the best mental health. A sign everybody gathered around him understood exquisitely well, greeting it with an exchange of quick, coy smiles. Their glances met.

"I'm not surprised at this," said one woman. "It was just a matter of time. I expected it to happen sooner or later if you want to know. Since he contracted Alzheimers, he lived in his own world. He mistook people for others he must have known in his youth. I will never forget how he always was trying to ask old Miss Galagher out… certainly the poor guy thought her to be someone he knew in his youth. He lived in the past… maybe it was better for him. He thought he was young again."

"Speaking of his living in the past, I will always remember his pets. Imagined pets," said another young woman who giggled nervously. "He must have kept them when he was young and he remembered it when Alzheimers started to mess with his head. I sometimes saw some brats who laughed at him when they saw him playing with them like it was the funniest thing in the world. Well, I must admit it was funny," the woman stuttered, "but it was very sad too. Really touching. I saw him many times walking his pets and stroking them – and there was just empty air, that's all. I can really understand how it might have looked funny to some."

"I know one such strange story from his youth," broke off the owner of the black umbrella. "Even before Alzheimer disease got him, he wasn't quite in his right mind, I think. One year, his brother left his pets with him for summer holiday and the next day they died. Food poisoning. Some moron planted poisoned food in his garden and they ate it. Imagine: he got them stuffed by a taxidermist and for many years used to keep them on a shelf. That's pretty disgusting if you ask me, to have dead animals in your bedroom. But, well, what else can you expect from someone like that? He was nuts even in his youth and that's all."

"He was just a sensitive man," said the first woman. "An animal lover. I really don't think it was proof of his craziness. He later imagined the pets were still with him. He still had them on his shelf, yes, Mike," the woman added, turning to the man who previously expressed his doubts as to the sanity of their late neighbor. "The Grey's kid, Aaron or Adam or whatever his name is, you know who I'm talking about, saw this when he made a bet with my son that he'd go to his house and touch the windowsill. You know, children were afraid of him. Such a local bogeyman. But harmless. Anyway this Adam or Aaron sneaked up to his window and he saw those animals standing on his shelf. My son whom he told about this told me later that they looked like they were still alive – neat fur, eyes made of glass beads - everything."

The umbrella man only gave out a sneering snort, showing what his opinion on people who kept dead animals in their houses was and turned away to look at the policemen at the door. It seemed they found a way past the lock.

"It was really touching to see him when he talked about his cat and dog with us. He always was taking them with him to boast of them. And of course nobody had a heart to tell him they weren't real. Every time he came to my restaurant, all the customers always pretended they could see them indeed and praised how well taken care of they were. He was so happy then," related a waitress working in a local restaurant, who came to join the group, cowering under an umbrella. "A poor man," she added, wiping tears that glistened for a moment in her glasses-covered eyes.

The policemen managed to open the door. They entered the door together with the doctors. The gathered neighbors came nearer, stopping up their noses and trying not to vomit. The odor of death to which they had grown accustomed grew stronger. They shifted back again so the medical workers could get through, carrying a litter tightly covered with a blanket. The litter with its sad contents was put into the ambulance which drove away, leaving the gathered crowd behind. Had it not been for the policemen who remained inside—and, of course, the odor—they would have entered the house. They were nosey like all neighbors have been from the beginning of the world and as all neighbors will be until the end of the world, amen. That's the rule that is in force all over the world.

Even from their position outside in the backyard they could see the silhouette of the famous "pet shelf" on the wall. If the neighbors' vigilant eyes could sweep its "inhabitants", they'd see the stuffed pets from which the old man's animal mania started, even after all those long years which had passed since their death, still were easily recognizable. One, a long-eared beagle with yellowish fur and its tongue which was just as long dried up after all those years, was still preserved in an amazingly good state. The taxidermist did very well. You could easily imagine the beagle jumping off of the shelf to lick your face off, barking cheerfully. The other was an orange, black-striped cat with its tiger like fur still glistening. Its muscles got flabby and the animal seemed shrunk, much smaller than when decades ago it burst with energy and health, but there was no mistaking that the cat must once have been a big, fat tomcat. In front of the cat sat a piece of lasagna, dried up, but surely not as old as the animals themselves, almost as if the orange cat still could eat. The glass beads put in both the animals' eye sockets made them look all the more alive.

The gathered crowd started to disperse. There was nothing else to do; they could discuss their neighbor's death at their own, warm homes rather than get a soaking, exposed to the gusts of the cold autumn wind penetrating their bodies.

The waitress looked at the opened door one more time before she joined the rest of her neighbors. "A poor man," she repeated, not knowing what else to say before she hesitantly joined the man with the black umbrella who gallantly let her in under it. His bald friend in glasses had already gone home – he was making his way towards his house on the other side of the street, taking big steps to flee from the pouring rain as fast as possible – so there was enough space under the umbrella.

"Yes, a poor guy," said her companion absent mindedly, shivering partially because of the cold, partially because of what happened to their ancient neighbor. "You are right, it's really sad, Irma. A poor man. Poor Mr. Arbuckle."


End file.
